Interesting Times (Discworld #17)

Interesting Times (Discworld #17) Page 12

Everyone in the city seemed to be wise, kind, strong or all three, especially some character called the Great Wizard who seemed to feature largely in the text. And there were mystifying little comments, as in, 'I saw a man tread upon the toes of a City Guard who said to him “Your wife is a big hippo!” to which the man responded “Place it where the sun does not shed daylight, enormous person”, upon which the Guard [this bit was in red ink and the handwriting was shaky, as if the writer was quite excited] did not remove the man's head according to ancient custom.' The statement was followed by a pictogram of a dog passing water, which was for some obscure reason the Agatean equivalent of an exclamation mark. There were five of these. Rincewind flicked through the pages. They were filled with the same dull stuff, sentences stating the blindingly obvious but often followed by several incontinent dogs. Such as: 'The innkeeper said the City had demanded tax but he did not intend to pay, and when I asked if he was not afraid he vouchsafed: “[Complicated pictogram] them all except one and he can [complicated pictogram] himself” [urinating dog, urinating dog]. He went on to say, “The [pictogram indicating Supreme Ruler] is a [another pictogram which, after some thought and holding up the picture at various angles, Rincewind decided meant 'a horse's bottom'] and you can tell him I said so”, at which point a Guard in the tavern did not disembowel him [urinating dog, urinating dog] but said, “Tell him from me also” [urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog].' What was so odd about that? People talked like that in Ankh-Morpork all the time, or at least expressed those sentiments. Apart from the dog. Mind you, a country that'd wipe out a whole city to teach the other cities a lesson was a mad place. Perhaps this was a book of jokes and he just hadn't seen the point. Perhaps comedians here got big laughs with lines like: 'I say, I say, I say, I met a man on the way to the theatre and he didn't chop my legs off, urinating dog, urinating dog—' He had been aware of the jingle of harness on the road, but hadn't paid it any attention. He hadn't even looked up at the sound of someone approaching. By the time he did think of looking up it was too late, because someone had their boot on his neck. 'Oh, urinating dog,' he said, before passing out. There was a puff of air and the Luggage appeared, dropping heavily into a snowdrift. There was a meat cleaver sticking into its lid. It remained motionless for some time and then, its legs moving in a complicated little dance, it turned around 360 degrees. The Luggage did not think. It had nothing to think with. Whatever processes went on inside it probably had more to do with the way a tree reacts to sun and rain and sudden storms, but speeded up very fast. After a while it seemed to get its bearings and ambled off across the melting snow.

The Luggage did not feel, either. It had nothing to feel with. But it reacted, in the same way that a tree reacts to the changing of the seasons. Its pace quickened. It was close to home. Rincewind had to concede that the shouting man was right. Not, that is, about Rincewind's father being the diseased liver of a type of mountain panda and his mother being a bucket of turtle slime; Rincewind had no personal experience of either parent but felt that they were probably at least vaguely humanoid, if only briefly. But on the subject of appearing to own a stolen horse he had Rincewind bang to rights and, also, a foot on his neck. A foot on the neck is nine points of the law. He felt hands rummaging in his pockets. Another person - Rincewind was not able to see much beyond a few inches of alluvial soil, but from context it appeared to be an unsympathetic person - joined in the shouting. Rincewind was hauled upright. The guards were pretty much like guards as Rincewind had experienced them everywhere. They had exactly the amount of intellect required to hit people and drag them off to the scorpion pit. They were league champions at shouting at people a few inches from their face. The effect was made surreal by the fact that the guards themselves had no faces, or at least no faces they could call their own. Their ornate, black-enamelled helmets and huge moustachioed visages painted on them, leaving only the owner's mouth uncovered so that he could, for example, call Rincewind's grandfather a box of inferior goldfish droppings. What I Did On My Holidays was waved in front of his face. 'Bag of rotted fish!'

'I don't know what it means,' said Rincewind. 'Someone just gave it to—'

'Feet of extreme rotted milk!'

'Could you perhaps not shout quite so loud? I think my eardrum has just exploded.' The guard subsided, possibly only because he had run out of breath. Rincewind had a moment to look at the scenery. There were two carts on the road. One of them seemed to be a cage on wheels; he made out faces watching him in terror. The other was an ornate palanquin carried by eight peasants; rich curtains covered the sides but he could see where they had been twitched aside so that someone within could look at him.

The guards were aware of this. It seemed to make them awkward. 'If I could just expl—'

'Silence, mouth of—' The guard hesitated. 'You've used turtle, goldfish and what you probably meant to be cheese,' said Rincewind. 'Mouth of chicken gizzards!' A long thin hand emerged from the curtains and beckoned, just once. Rincewind was hustled forward. The hand had the longest fingernails he'd ever seen on something that didn't purr. 'Kowtow!'

'Sorry?' said Rincewind. 'Kowtow!' Swords were produced. 'I don't know what you mean!' Rincewind wailed. 'Kowtow, please,' whispered a voice by his ear. It was not a particularly friendly voice but compared to all the other voices it was positively affectionate. It sounded as though it belonged to quite a young man. And it was speaking very good Morporkian. 'How?'

'You don't know that? Kneel down, press your forehead on the ground. That's if you want to be able to wear a hat again.' Rincewind hesitated. He was a free-born Morporkian, and on the list of things a citizen didn't do was bow down to any, not to put too fine a point on it, foreigner. On the other hand, right at the top of the list of things a citizen didn't do was get their head chopped off. 'That's better. That's good. How did you know you ought to tremble?'

'Oh, I thought up that bit myself.' The hand beckoned with a finger. A guard slapped Rincewind in the face with the mud-encrusted What I Did . . . Rincewind clutched it guiltily as the guard scurried towards his master's digit. 'Voice?' said Rincewind.

'Yes?'

'What happens if I claim immunity because I'm a foreigner?'

'There's a special thing they do with a wire-mesh waistcoat and a cheesegrater.'

'Oh.'

'And there are torturers in Hunghung who can keep a man alive for years.'

'I suppose you're not talking about healthy early morning runs and a high-fibre diet?'

'No. So keep quiet and with any luck you'll be sent to be a slave in the palace.'

'Luck is my middle name,' said Rincewind, indistinctly. 'Mind you, my first name is Bad.'

'Remember to gibber and grovel.'

'I'll do my very best.' The white hand emerged bearing a scrap of paper. The guard took it, turned towards Rincewind and cleared his throat. 'Harken to the wisdom and justice of District Commissioner Kee, ball of swamp emanations! Not him, I mean you!' He cleared his throat again and peered closer at the paper in the manner of one who learned to read by saying the name of each letter very carefully to himself. ' “The white pony runs through the . . . the . . .” ' The guard turned and held a whispered conversation with the curtains, and turned back again. ' “. . . chrysanthemum . . . mumum blossoms, The cold wind stirs the Apricot trees. Send him to The palace to slave Until all appendages drop Off.” ' Several of the other guards applauded. 'Look up and clap,' said the Voice. 'I'm afraid my appendages will drop off.'

'It's a big cheesegrater.'

'Encore! Wow! Superb! That bit about the chrys-anthemumums? Wonderful!'

'Good. Listen. You're from Bes Pelargic. You've got the right accent, damned if I know why. It's a seaport and people there are a little strange. You were robbed by bandits and escaped on one of their horses. That's why you haven't got your papers. You need pieces of paper for everything here, including being anybody. And pretend you don't know me.'

'I don't know you.'

'Good. Long Live The Changing Things To A More Equitable State While Retaining Due Respect For The Traditions Of Our Forebears And Of Course Not Harming The August Personage Of The Emperor Endeavour!'

'Good. Yes. What?' A guard kicked Rincewind in the region of the kidneys. This suggested, in the universal language of the boot, that he should get up. He managed to get up on one knee, and saw the Luggage. It wasn't his, and there were three of them. The Luggage trotted to the crest of a low hill and stopped so fast that it left a lot of little grooves in the dirt. In addition to not having any equipment with which to think or feel, the Luggage also had no means of seeing. The manner in which it perceived events was a complete mystery. It perceived the other Luggages. The three of them stood patiently in a line behind the palanquin. They were big. They were black. The Luggage's legs disappeared inside its body. After a while it very cautiously opened its lid, just a fraction. Of the three things that most people know about the horse, the third is that, over a short distance, it can't run as fast as a man. As Rincewind had learned to his advantage, it has more legs to sort out. There are additonal advantages if a) the people on horseback aren't expecting you to run and b) you happen to be, very conveniently, in an athletic starting position. Rincewind rose like a boomerang curry from a sensitive stomach. There was a lot of shouting but the comforting thing, the important thing, was that it was all behind him. It would soon try to catch him up but that was a problem for the future. He could

also consider where he was running to as well, but an experienced coward never bothered with the to when the from held such fascination. A less practised runner would have risked a glance behind, but Rincewind instinctively knew all about wind drag and the tendency of inconvenient rocks to position themselves under the unwary foot. Besides, why look behind? He was already running as fast as he could. Nothing he could see would make him run any faster. There was a large shapeless village ahead, a construction apparently of mud and dung. In the fields in front of it a dozen peasants looked up from their toil at the accelerating wizard. Perhaps it was Rincewind's imagination, but as he passed them he could have sworn that he heard the cry: 'Necessarily Extended Duration To The Red Army! Regrettable Decease Without Undue Suffering To The Forces of Oppression!' Rincewind dived through the huts as the soldiers charged at the peasants. Cohen had been right. There seemed to be a revolution. But the Empire had been in unchanged existence for thousands of years, courtesy and a respect for protocol were part of its very fabric, and by the sound of it the revolutionaries had yet to master the art of impolite slogans. Rincewind preferred running to hiding. Hiding was all very well, but if you were found then you were stuck. But the village was the only cover for miles around, and some of the soldiers had horses. A man might be faster than a horse over a short distance, but over this panorama of flat, open fields a horse had a running man bang to rights. So he ducked into a building at random and pushed aside the first door he came to. It had, pasted on it, the words: Examination. Silence! Forty expectant and slightly worried faces looked up at him from their writing stools. They weren't children, but full-grown adults. There was a lectern at the end of the room and, on it, a pile of papers sealed with string and wax. Rincewind felt the atmosphere was familiar. He'd breathed it before, even if it had been a world away. It was full of those cold sweaty odours created by the sudden realization that it was probably too late to do that revision you'd kept on putting off. Rincewind had faced many horrors in his time, but none held quite the same place in the lexicon of dread as those few seconds after someone said, 'Turn over your papers now.' The candidates were watching him. There was shouting somewhere outside.